How Much Space Does an Individual Need on a Ship? Why?

So if you look at this question from a sociological and cultural perspective, as well as practical perspectives, this is a question that will take some exploring. For the sake of keeping this a decent length, I will save my perspective on working for another post.

We can safely assume that every person will need a location to sleep, a location to eat, a location to store their possessions, communal entertainment space, a location to exercise and a location for bodily waste. When you take into consideration that each person will need both private/semi-private space as well as public space and storage space, the question becomes even more complex.

Proxemics varies from culture to culture. A native of New York City has a different personal bubble than a native from rural Texas. In general, Texans have Huge personal bubbles and New Yorkers have much smaller bubbles. This is due to cultural differences based on the available space of their environment. If you want more info on the cultural aspects of personal space read this article from NPR.

The ISS (International Space Station) has the cubic volume of a Bowing 747 and holds hundreds of experiments and 6 crew members. In this case, space is relative because the experiments and equipment take up a lot of volume. Also remember that the majority of space is shared space. From the video I looked at each astronaut gets what looks like a sleeping bag and a small space for personal possessions… plus a few small areas around the ship for food and waste storage.

Toiletting can be consolidated for multiple people, people already share bathrooms in office buildings and homes. There are a few options in regards to actual toilet facilities, dry toilets AKA composting toilets and wet toilets, AKA conventional western shitters. Personally, I think that composting toilets that incinerate the waste will be the best solution because the matter that is left can be safely added to the soil in the food production area or added to the soil production for colonies. Liquid waste can be processed for mineral separation and refiltered into plant production.

Greywater from bathing can also be used for washing clothes and growing food, provided it is treated. Showers are a necessity, and baths would be a luxurious communal affair. If ship inhabitants were to adopt the Japanese and Scandinavian bathing policies of steam and scrape, short shower then soaking, water consumption would be greatly reduced.

Options in regards to sleeping arrangements are endless, consider the crew cabins in any of the Star Trek series, many are spacious and could potentially hold whole families. The bunk rooms in Battle Star Galactica also offer a cramped but viable option. I have to question if communal bunks are a good idea or if pods like the Japanese pod hotels make the most sense. A major point to consider is; if part of the crew is in cryo, if they are strictly a generation ship or if the ship is capable of rapid travel. If the crew is in cryo then they would only need enough space for the cryo unit, a small space for personal belongings and then the space for the skeleton crew, and a location to house the crew as awoken.

When it comes to food consumption it would be wise to only have food in certain areas. I believe that any ship needs a galley and a communal mess hall as well as a captains dining room for formal and planning events. This being said the space required for a mess hall will be determined by crew size, shifts, and duration of travel. Communal eating has an added bonus of reducing food waste, increasing moral and minimizing consumption in gluttons. If artificial gravity is produced on the ship I would think an open salad bar and a school cafeteria style set up would work well, given much higher quality food. Or the tray setup that was seen in the Doris Day film, That Touch Of Mink.

Considering that majority of the objects on the ship will be for public and communal use, I can see each person carrying two 30 quart tubs for their personal possessions. These could be housed in personal quarters or in storage facilities that are set up like warehouses.

In regards to entertainment and exercise, I feel that both are vital to psychosocial stability. Considering the recently release virtual reality headsets entertainment and exercise can be intermingled. I would still recommend movie nights and socials for people to congregate but VR marathons can be done on exercise bikes and treadmills (Check out this ISS astronaut attending a marathon from space).

Taking these points into consideration picking a number arbitrarily is silly. This is a design problem best left to the engineers. However, hypothetically 500 square feet (46.45 sq meters) is a good number for personal space if each family unit is given their own quarters, must cook for themselves and have personal Toiletting spaces. If the individuals are in strictly communal spaces then each person would need a minimum of 38 square feet of floor space and exceptionally well-designed storage space. Arbitrarily the space needed would be somewhere between 38 square feet and 500 square feet.

I live in The United States and I regularly listen to politicians. Right now I am wondering how certain people have been nominated for certain positions. One comedian said, “It is like all the nominations are being put in charge of things they hate.” That is a paraphrase and I can’t remember who said it but it seems true. Wouldn’t it be better to have public servants serving in areas that they are passionate about?

How many people need to follow through with their destiny?

Simply everyone should pursue their passions regardless of perceived obstacles. Those obstacles are the way to the solution. Keep looking if you are hunting a passion and your personal destiny.

What will it take to do the multitude of deeds to achieve our ideal future?

(My humble opinion?)

Well if you want to get technical each person has an ideal future that is individualized. However, as a collective humanity is in search of an ideal future that is based on collective good, compromise, and individual freedoms.

As of today I wish David Weber’s “tree cats” aka The People existed. However I feel that the question needs to be broken down into smaller bits because there are so many categories of “no proof yet.”

Ships:

Hells bells. If I’m pulling from SciFi I can’t pick just one ship there are so many that would make my day and life so much happier. The Tardis, The Bentenmaru, The Heart of Gold, The Enterprise,Serenity, and Red Dwarf are just a few of the plethora of ships that with a little ingenuity and a few thousand strong minds could design an build. Humanity is filled with bored explorers and people who if given the chance would choose exploration over war any day.

Resources:

Oh for the day we discover a library out in the middle of space, filled with books and languages we have yet to know and find books from our own home. Why??? Because Knowledge is the greatest resource we have. With knowledge and imagination we can create anything in a way that harms none.

Culture:

My human mind has trouble wrapping itself around the possibility that there is an advanced civilization and culture out there that is filled with well fed pacifist and CONSISTENT Nonviolent Conflict resolution. There are days that I feel if we were visited by a sentient race that lives beyond our immediate field we would be blown back to the stone age simply for our own good. That said If cultures exist beyond this crazy one, I want to see it, learn about it and preserve it to the best of my ability.

Sentient Beings:

Tree-Cats fall to the top of that list, the culture is fascinating and they are different enough from us that humanity’s minds would have to open significantly to see fluff balls with sentience as more than pets. The second thing on the list would be Vulcans, similar enough to us to relate and empathize yet different enough that we can’t deny who and what they are.

Technology:

Lets see. We already have tricorders, we call them cellular phones. Somehow we got a crappy hoverboard. Commercial space travel is in it’s infancy. People constantly whisper about Skynet and the Matrix. (Got to do a post on Personal Mythology and Prevailing Mythos)

So what do I want to see and why?

Light speed drives… Exploration baby! Cryo Chambers… worst case senario we can’t get a decent long lived propulsion drive we have to hoof it in cryo. A decent freaking Pickup truck/cargo van for space travel, I mean how are you suppose to get anything serious done without a puddle jumper of some kind! Hum…

THE FLYING CAR THE JETSONS SAID WE WERE GONNA GET A FEW YEARS BACK! Well this one is sort of on it’s way. The kicker is it isn’t really flying it is more like the auto driving cars from I-Robot.

Which reminds me Tech that doesn’t exist but would be freaking amazing… A robotic vacuum that actually gets cat fur out of carpet.

My son fell down a flight of stairs. Less than ten minutes later he and I were at the ER. I had no coat on and he was glued to my chest all 41 pounds of him. My hands were shaking and I couldn’t focus. The triage nurse guided my hands to the papers to fill out. As many times as we have been in the ER it amazes me how few nurses realize or know that he is profoundly deaf and autistic.

On Ben’s last ER visit he was given a medication that causes serious disorientation and sedation. He did not react well to going back into T1 (Trauma Room 1). It took all of my strength to get him on the bed to be seen by the nurse and doctor.

The poor doctor didn’t know Kiddo’s routine. “You have to look at his ears first, it’s his routine.” Kiddo calmed down a little but not much. Onto the floor he went as soon as the doctor had shone the light in his eyes. Major meltdown in progress he began head slamming on the concrete.

Back into my arms and onto a roller chair after a lot of signs and convincing. Then came the x-ray tech. An Autism mom herself she walked in signing.

Thank you to whoever had her scheduled.

With the help of an EMT 2 x-rays got taken. Both appeared to be clear of any major issues.

The nurse came back in with the same medication from Ben’s last visit. He did not react well at all. Sitting on a visitors chair, her got a shot to his thigh, while restrained by three people. He would do anything to stay away from the blue sheeted hospital bed.

“Give him a band-aid!” Ben took it and put it over the injection site. He calmed down a little more, looking at me with anger and betrayal in his eyes.

Then my hell truly began.

Ben’s eyes began to quiver as the sedative began to take hold. Drool dripped from between his lips. The fear in his eyes became unbearable for me.

For a split second, I was back in the big yellow farmhouse. In front of me was a ten-year-old girl with cafe-latte skin and jet black hair. The craniopharyngioma was killing her slowly and painfully. She was coming round from a non-conforming seizure. When she could talk again, she started to talk about heaven, Gramma, Carrie, Angels and Jesus. I think it was Mom who asked what Jesus looked like, then Aimee fell into another seizure.

I snapped back to the ER and my son who was sitting in a chair was wavering back and forth, side to side. I asked him if he saw the butterflies and angels. His eyes darted around the room like lightning, pausing and focusing intently in multiple places.

“Do you see Great-Gramma?” I signed.

His eyes bored right into me and he nodded. Suddenly his eyes began to look around wildly again. A vacant stare replaced the fear and his normally precocious curious gaze. All I could think of was the week I left him alone in the

Carrying his dead weight to the gurney I sat down as a nurse walked in from radiology. She was excitedly talking about the food in the breakroom celebrating her 40 plus years at the hospital and her last hour at work. We were wheeled to radiology.

My mind was racing. I laid kiddo down on the narrow table. I was drug back into another memory.

The 18 month-old, blond cherubim, was swollen beyond recognition. My youngest sister lay in a PICU bed, brain-dead and on life support. Her tiny body too far gone to donate any organ, I begged any god in existence to bring her back.

Tears rolled down my cheeks as the image of my sister and the image of my son melded. I watched the CT machine stop. Ben was laying there, his toes wiggling. His eyes wide unable to move and still hallucinating, I lifted him and sat on the gurney.

Back in the room, we waited. Trauma Room 1 has no television and my book was in the parking lot. I was alone in my head.

The nurse asked me if I needed anything.

Water.

The doctor asked if I wanted a sedative.

No thank you.

I talked to the nurse about the NICU. She spoke of her first marriage.

She spoke of her first marriage.

I felt like a fool for talking about my emotions and my experiences. I discovered I need more support.

The test results came back and the doctor said, “No signs of bleeds and no broken bones.”

Relief flooded me.

Ben sat up a few minutes later, then collapsed back on top of me. This happened every five to seven minutes for forty-five minutes. Then he puked on me. The vomiting scared me more than anything else. Ben had a Nissen Fundoplication done at nine months and it is still very tight. Meaning he can’t easily throw up.

Twenty minutes later we were discharged. Between the flood of memories and watching my son constantly to assure myself he was breathing I didn’t sleep much at all that night.

I learned some very important things while I was in the ER Tuesday night. Triggers really do come in all shapes and forms. My son’s injury triggered so many memories. My panic and fear opened me up to being able to process old and buried memories. While the grief has lessened over time my PTSD still sucks.

The thought that “we are not alone,” fascinates and frightens me, in an exhilarating way. It is like driving on the side of a mountain with only inches on either side of you. One misstep and we will careen off the edge. However, if we are cautious then we will find amazing views and many new experiences.

I know that when I think about the unknown aspects of an entire culture my mind races. I wonder if I will be able to find any similarities between said race and humanity. Because we are, “all star dust” There is the chance that if we are exceptionally lucky we have a lot in common with our celestial neighbors.

The fear that life beyond our little puddle in space will be far far advanced from us, worries me because their intent is unknow. Humans seem to be pretty violent creatures, we have bombed the crap out of our planet and destroyed many ecosystems. So if our neighbors are like us, they could have our violent tendencies too.

Overall, I have to hope that we will find life out there somewhere and that for the most part, other lifeforms are peaceful in nature.